Feel a touch or the intensity of a hug. Danser. Se stain on a new city while you’re traveling. Take an object and remember a happy moment from the past?This type of process and many others related to sensations, memories and spatial orientation are governed by this important area of our brain: the parietal lobe.
From time to time neuroscientists surprise us with new discoveries about one of the five brain lobes, speaking of regions, one of the most fascinating is the one behind the frontal lobe, whose importance lies above all in being the focus of most of our lobes. perceptual processes.
- David Eagleman.
- One of today’s most relevant neurologists.
- Explains in?The secret life of the brain.
- One of his books.
- That each of us doesn’t perceive things as they really are.
- We see reality the way our brain loves it.
- The parietal lobe is the integration zone where much of the information from the rest of the brain passes.
- It is he who organizes.
- Who allows us to feel and understand the reality around us.
Let’s look at more data below
“What if I told you that the world around you, with its rich colors, textures, sounds and smells, is an illusion, a spectacle your brain creates for you?If you could perceive reality as it is, you would be surprised by its colorless, odorless and tasteless silence. Outside your brain, is there only energy and matter?. ?David Eagleman, the brain?
The brain is divided into different regions: frontal, parietal, occipital, temporal and insula lobe; the parietal lobe is one of the largest and is located near the top, right in the center of the cerebral cortex; in front of him is the front. Lobe and a little lower are the occipital and temporal lobes.
In turn, it is separated from the rest of the regions by the parieto-occipital groove (which separates it from the frontal lobe) and by the lateral groove, which establishes a boundary with the temporal lobe. It is interesting to remember that all areas of our brain are lateralized, that is, they form through a right hemisphere and a left hemisphere.
The name of? Parietal wolf? It’s derived from Latin, what does it mean?Wall. o “wall”. It symbolizes this intermediate structure located in the center of our brain where a symbolic border is established, a border where information, processes and infinite connections are crossed.
To better understand the complexity and relevance of this area, let’s see how it is structured below.
As we have already said, the parietal lobe participates in all the sensory and perceptual processes that are so relevant in our daily life, many times, to give a very illustrative example of what this structure allows, a person can draw a letter on our skin with his finger and we are able to recognize it.
However, something so simple involves infinite processes: feeling the touch on our skin, recognizing movements and associating that feeling and its trait with a letter of the alphabet, is fascinating, but its functions do not stop there. Let’s see what else this allows us to do:
Thanks to the parietal lobe, we can
Studies such as the 2008 Tempe University of Psychology in the United States have revealed one of the most recent discoveries: thanks to advances in neuroimaging techniques, it has been found that parietal lobe is fundamental in the short term and working memory, as well as in episodic memory.
Do people with traumatic or organic injuries (e. g. due to a stroke) in the parietal lobes have serious problems recognizing their body, orienting themselves in space, manipulating or reaching objects, drawing, cleaning?Therefore, apraxia (inability to perform movements voluntarily) ) and agnosia (inability to recognize objects) are very common.
Aphasias or language problems, as well as ataxias (body and even visual coordination problems), are also very recurrent in these types of pathologies associated with parietal lobe injuries.
In conclusion, we could define the parietal lobe as the focus where much of our sensory processes live, that structure depends on our ability to move, to interact with the environment and the people around us.